I'm angry. I'm very angry. It's been nearly three months since my last post, and a lot has unfolded since that time. In early November, I was facing the prospect of a new job. I was excited about the future I was pursuing at that time. And although it took a while, I now find myself involved with helping to get Senator Bernie Sanders elected as President. I thank the universe for that - whenever I meet up with the good people behind this campaign, the very same people involved with it almost day and night, I feel my hope rise up. I feel empowered by the positivity that I'm surrounded by. However, my anger towards the state of this country remains very real, and very powerful.
In the last three months, I've found myself horrified and angry numerous times. In the political realm, I have a lot of fury towards the conservatives in this nation. At rally after rally for each of the Republicans running, the open racism, the open displays of religious xenophobia, the open displays of homophobia, the love affair for the Second Amendment and the Second Amendment only, has left me horrified beyond words. At numerous rallies of the most prominent of all the Republican candidates, Donald Trump, I have watched with fury and horror as Latino-American protestors, Black Lives Matter protestors, Muslims and even liberal individuals were shoved, spit on, beaten, threatened and ultimately booted out in the most unceremonious of ways, with the entire crowd often cheering on this behavior. I find myself asking how this can possibly be the very same Republican Party that gave us men like Abraham Lincoln, men like Theodore Roosevelt, who once had the courage to first free the slaves, and then strive for racial equality until their last dying breath. I wonder how this can be the same Republican Party that once fought corporations inch by inch in a bitterly contested battle to uphold the nation's most economically vulnerable citizens into a much better situation - a situation where they would receive fair wages, fair working hours, actual benefits and a safe working environment, instead of the borderline slavery workers had endured for millennia beforehand.
Instead, what I now see is a party hell bent on ensuring minorities once again face the brunt of violence and slavery because their "God" has ordained that it be done. I see a party hell bent on slaughtering anyone not of a fundamentalist Christian belief. I see a party hell bent on making serfdom a very real concept in this world once more. I see a party hell bent on letting corporations destroy the one and only planet known to be able to sustain life, all the while assuming that Jesus will either come back and fix it almost instantly (while simultaneously murdering in cold blood anyone that these people disapprove of), or equally assuming that there is nothing wrong with our environment, that somehow it is all part of a natural cycle, that unheard of weather changes that are creating enormous threats to the long term survival of human civilization are somehow "normal". I see a party retracing the very steps of history itself, and more particularly the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. I see a party that doesn't seem to give a damn about the Constitution - it pays lip service to the Constitution, and that's it. If anything, I see the Republican Party as being more in admiration of the Articles of Confederation, under which the newly created United States nearly met it's demise had it not been for the Founding Fathers quite astutely seeing that we were on course for a civil war. And it angers me to see much of the country following in lockstep behind the Republican Party of today, it's endgame very likely ending in the permanent end of all life as we know it. And none of the party's followers seem to give a damn.
On a similar theme, the recent terrorist attacks within our own borders and elsewhere have left me greatly aggrieved. In early November, the world watched with horror as 128 people were slaughtered in cold blood on the streets of Paris, the perpetrators of the attack evidently being connected directly to ISIS. ISIS, a beast which we gave birth to in Iraq through arming the very same individuals who we abandoned yet again after we felt they were no longer necessary in our quest to seize yet more oil in lands half a world away in a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. And yet, in that same nation, Iraq, many still unbelievably enough think that it was involved with the death and destruction wrought upon New York City, Washington D.C., and in the fields of Pennsylvania....a lie spread by an administration that helped to usher in unbelievable amounts of damage to our nation's own wellbeing, and our credibility at the international level. And all for the benefit of a few rich oilmen who refuse to believe that their products are killing the planet off one step at a time. At the same time, hundreds more died because of these same murderers in Lebanon. And again, the world wept.
On the heels of the Paris attacks came the blowback from an ongoing civil war in Syria. A civil war in which both sides, by every account, we financed, or more specifically our own domestic arms industry financed with glee, and all over the prospect of making money. The end result was tens of thousands of refugees with no training, no way to fight back...most of those refugees being widowed mothers and their children. In a gesture of humanitarianism, our government elected to bring 20,000 of those refugees here to the United States. Sound logic, given that we put them into a situation where they had nothing left over there aside from the possibility of a lifetime of violence, starvation and misery because of our weapons industry adding fuel to a fire we never should have been around in the first place. What was the reaction from the political right? Fuck them. Bomb them. Send them back over there, they don't belong here. Take care of our homeless veterans, fuck the refugees, they're all terrorists, or at least a few of them might be. All words coming from people who condemned homeless veterans of our own wars before as bums, as being guilty of stolen valor because they apparently did not fight the cartoonish stereotype depicted by G.I. Joe. Again, the racism and the infuriating refusal of the entire bulk of conservatives in this country made my blood boil. And the insinuations that every last goddamned one of those refugees, who we created through our oil industry's efforts to seize more oil and land for pipelines in the entire region, were little more than goat fuckers? The condemnation of their entire religion without even studying it in depth? The fury I still feel towards the insensitive bastards who spout such ignorant words is unheard of. I again have to wonder - is this truly the same party that once stood for equality for all?
On the heels of that came the Planned Parenthood shooting right by my home. All afternoon I heard the gunshots echo from Centennial. Every report that evening and since then has indicated that the terrorist behind the dozen plus wounded and the three dead there carried out that attack on purpose. Every report, every statement made by the terrorist himself, has shown that the bastard did it to prevent abortion. It has shown that he was inspired directly by the theocratic traitors within the ranks of the Republican Party and other similar conservative political parties. And, it seems, he was also very anti-government...a lunatic all too willing to murder his fellow Americans in defense of "his" country. Basically, a bum with a gun. And for the most part, the political right remained silent, or tried to classify this terrorist attack as a "bank robbery gone bad", or insisting that it all began at King Soopers nearby, and that Planned Parenthood was simply a place he chose to hole up at. Never mind any damn facts, either. Still others cheered him on, insisting that this was God's punishment for the aborting of a collection of fetal cells with no nerves, no sentience! Again, is this the same party that once stood for reason? The same party whose men worked within NASA to put men on the moon? My fury increased.
Since then, the continued, full-throated defense of our system of economic inequality has continued unabated. The promotion of war as the answer has gone unabated. The defense of a murderous cult posing as a legitimate religion has continued unabated. And, despite a few notable examples, the Democratic Party, for it's part, has shown itself to be a mere mockery of what it once accomplished under JFK, Truman, Johnson or even FDR himself. The establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, along with much of the remainder of her party, seems inclined to support the Republican Party's love of the Gilded Age through action, even if she now tries to decry them. Their defense of minorities and gays is, at best, a joke. And now, despite whatever the corporate media in this country may tell us, much of the country has coalesced into one of two camps - on one side, there are those of us who support Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of the few lone figures who has tried with all of his might to fight private sector corruption and racism in this country for decades. On the other, Donald Trump seems to be the candidate that is attracting the most racist, close-minded, religiously biased segments of the entire nation. In other words, this year will be a battle for the American soul. And it is our final chance to grasp the straws of what could be either a golden future for not only our country, but our species, or march down the path to darkness and death. And it will be a long, drawn out battle between the two sides. That much is clear.
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